Washington, DC
Washington, DC
I got out of school the 8th of June. The next day I left for Washington, DC with my Girl Scout troop. Everyone came to my house and we left at 11am. We got there around 3:45pm, where we met our tour guide/bus driver. We went to the hotel. I slept with my mom and Nicole and her mom. I literally was a walking zombie this entire trip because all they did was snore, and not light snores either. I ended up laughing at some of them because they were so dramatic.
We hadn't even been in Washington for more than 30 minutes when we saw the President. They had cleared the roads on the other side and he passed by in his limo with a crowd of policemen and his ambulance, etc.
After we dropped our stuff off and got organized, we went to eat at Sgt. Peppers. It was pretty good, an Italian buffet. When we were leaving, we almost got in an accident, one car decided to go this way, another decided he wasn't going to stop and we were turning. It actually happened a couple of times, esp. The next day, when we had a different tour guide. She decided that she wanted to be on the other side of the road so she had to cut across four lanes. And I thought I had problems driving.
We made a pit stop at the Albert Einstein Memorial at the National Academy of Sciences. My entire Girl Scout troop climbed over him, and under him they had the solar system with little nails to show where stars would be. After that we walked over to the Korean memorial. In the wall there was a picture of only one animal, the German Shepard which was the first time dogs were used in war. There were 19 soliders in the field that reflected another set of 19 soldiers to signify the 38 countries that fought in it. All the soliders looked alike except for the Russian, which had a head wrap instead of the usual helmets the other soldiers wore.
Then we went to the Lincoln Memorial. It had 58 steps and on one wall, where his speech is, they had misspelled "future", they had "euture" and tried to fix it, but was noticeably unfixed. Then it had 48 states listed and when they joined the union, except for Alaska and Hawaii because they didn't enter till after they had already carved them in. Ohio had the wrong entry date, it had 1802 and it was supposed to be 1803. If you looked on the left side of Lincoln from the back, it is believed that the artist put Robert E. Lee there. It is also said that his left hand is clenched to represent the tension of the civil war and the right is relaxed because the US was falling apart. Or, the his left hand stood for the letter "A" in sign language and his right for the letter "L", his initials, and for his beliefs in allowing everyone to be able to read. It is also said that he is half smiling because the war is over, but the other half is for not being able to keep the union together.
Finally we went to the Vietnam war wall. On our way over there, we passed a statue dedicated to the nurses. There are eight trees planted around the statue to signify the eight nurses that died. The statue has three nurses, one with a solider in her arms, one looking up for a helicopter and one with a helmet to show that she lost the solider. After we went by the wall, we went to the final statue of three soliders, an African American, Caucasian, and a Hispanic to show that all of them came together to become a family since they lost their own families. Most of the soldiers they recruited where between the ages of 18-24.
The next day we wet to the Arlington Cemetery. We had to wait forever to get in there because they had a car show going thru, some colleges that had made electric cars or something. We saw Kennedy's grave site and the Arlington estate, where Robert E. Lee lived. It took us about a half-hour to walk across the cemetery to see the tomb of the unknown soliders. There are supposed to be four, one from each war, except you might have heard last year that they knew who one of the soldiers was and so one of the tombs are empty.
Then we went to Pentagon Centre for lunch, we were supposed to go to the underground mall for lunch, but we didn't. Then we went down Embassy road and to the Washington National Cathedral. Afterwards we went to the famous zoo. There was nothing there! We saw the panda, who had just come out of kidney surgery and was in a very funny sleeping position. I took a picture of almost every animal I saw, which wasn't many. It was kind of funny thought because we saw this sea lion and of course we were talking to it and this little kid came up to us and said, "You know he can't talk!" Well I'll be darned. Before we went to dinner at the Hamburger Hamlet, we saw Two Jima, which is supposed to have an optical allusion that as you drive by, the flag appears to stand up straight. Finally, we went to the Kennedy Center, Jeferson Memorial, and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial. We got some really cute pictures there, I love his dog Fala, which he got for Christmas, and we're assuming the name came from the song because it's a very feminine name for a male dog.
The third day we went to Mt Verna and earned a patch. It was so hot and too much walking. Kind of glad I live in Florida, we have no hills what-so-ever. We also passed by VA's smallest house which is being sold for $675,000 in Alexandria. Then we went to the Holocaust museum. I was a girl named Helene from Czechoslovakia who survived. She did some stuff that I probably would have done which is kind of ironic. Of course my mom didn't survive to well thru this museum, and I hate seeing people cry because then I start to. We also went to see Daniel's story and went to the mall again. Then we had to wait outside for 40 minutes until we were allowed to go into the Bureau of Engraving, where the money in made. It was so tempting to touch the ceiling, which was only 6'8", and me being 6', wouldn't have been too hard to reach, so I had to keep my hands in my pockets the entire time. (If you touched the ceiling, the police would come and take you away after the alarm would go off.) Our final stop was at the Washington Monument which is covered entirely by scaffiling so you could barely see thru the windows. It took 70 minutes on the elevator to get there, 60 down, because we had to walk down one flight of stairs.
On the 12th, we spent the entire day at the Smithsonian. We had stopped at the Awakening before, which is basically a hand, an arm and a hand, a knee, a foot and his head sticking out of the earth. The only Simthsonian's we got to were the American History Museum, Natural History where the hope diamond is located, and the National Art Gallery, both the east and the west buildings. Then we had dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen which just happened to be located in a homosexual town. Of course, I have nothing against them, but well, we had a not-so-bright girl in my troop who said some things that didn't need to be said. She asked our tour guide if he was gay or not, and well, got herself into a lot of trouble. Is it me, or do you just not ask someone that? Anywho, we then went to the National Archives, which we would have gone to before, but we weren't sure if we needed a ticket to get in there since there was such a long time out the door to it. We saw the Declaration of Independence, Magna Carta, and their little memorial for picturing the century. It is said that there is a left hand on the side of the Declaration of Independence that got there because everyone was right handed, signed with their right hand, and left their left hand on the paper. Over time, dust settled and the hand appeared, but of course, that is just the myth.
Our last day, we went to the White House for pictures. We weren't able to get in because our Senate representative never sent us the tickets. We went to the Petersen House, where Lincoln died, which is across from the Ford's theater. We couldn't get in there because the President was having a ceremony or something in there and they were setting it up so yeah, we couldn't get in. So we walked over the National Portrait Gallery and saw the original picture of Juliette Low, the founder of Girl Scouts, and Elivs Presley. We then walked over to the Hard Rock Cafe where we met my pen pal, Julie and her family. Our final stop was at the National Air and Space Museum. We went into the Albert Einstein planetarium and saw "A Star to Steer Her By". I tried so hard to stay awake, while the two people next to me did.
Our guide dropped us off at the airport and we were off. We ended up having to make an unexpected flight change in Charollette, NC. When we got to the airport, a little earlier than we expected, we had to wait for forever to get our luggage. And waited, and waited, only to find out that they lost three suitcases. Of course, we went the only people who lost theirs, but the people in my room, Nicole and her mom, and Jacquie where the victims. I felt so bad too because I told Jacquie to put her baby doll in the suitcase, thinking, oh it won't get lost, and it did, but luckily, she listened to my mom, and not me, and put it in her carry on. If she had listened to me, yeah... Word of advice, if you do go to Wsahington, DC in the future, never sit down on government property, you will be arrested.
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